Stalker

  The wooden floor out in the hallway creaks. She thinks it sounds like a grown person trying to creep quietly.

  Sandra dials the number as she sits down on one of the kitchen chairs. She holds the phone to her ear as the call goes through, pinching the corner of the letter.

  ‘Hi, Mum, it’s me,’ she says.

  ‘Hello, darling, I was just going to call you … Have you thought any more about this evening?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About coming over for a meal.’

  ‘Oh yes … I don’t think I feel up to it.’

  ‘You still have to eat, you know. I could come and pick you up in the car, I’ll give you a lift both ways.’

  Sandra suddenly hears something rustling and looks over towards the dark hallway, and its clothes and shoes.

  ‘Will you let me do that? Darling?’

  ‘OK,’ she whispers, looking at the letter in her hand.

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Shall I do beef á la Rydberg? You usually like that, you know, cubes of steak and—’

  ‘OK, Mum,’ she interrupts, and goes into the bathroom.

  The blister-pack of Prozac is on the edge of the basin. The green-and-white capsules shimmer in their plastic rows.

  Sandra looks at her own reflection in the mirror. The bathroom door is open behind her and she can see right out into the hall. It looks like there’s someone standing there. Her heart skips a beat, even though she knows it’s only her black raincoat.

  ‘The three musketeers went out for lunch today …’

  Sandra leaves the bathroom while her mother tells her that she and her sisters went out to the Waxholm Hotel and had fried Baltic herring with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam, melted butter, and nice cold low-alcohol beer.

  ‘How is Malin?’ Sandra asks.

  ‘She’s amazing,’ her mother replies. ‘I don’t know how she manages to be so positive the whole time … she’s had her last session of radiotherapy, and feels pretty good … It makes you glad you live in Sweden … she’d never have been able to pay for the treatment on her own …’

  ‘Isn’t there anything else they can do now?’

  ‘Karolina thinks we should all move to Jamaica and sit around smoking cannabis and eating good food until the money runs out.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Sandra smiles.

  ‘I’ll let her know,’ her mum laughs.

  The phone feels warm and sticky against her cheek. Sandra moves it to her other ear and walks to the bedroom, but stops suddenly. She can’t help staring at the window. The big bird cherry is moving through the broken blinds.

  ‘I had a look at the list of course literature for your fourth term,’ her mum says. ‘It’s all about the politics of the job market.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandra says weakly.

  She isn’t sure why she doesn’t just tell her mum about her place at Södertörn.

  Slowly she forces herself to look away from the window, and catches sight of herself in the mirror. Her dressing-gown has fallen open again. She stands there in her underwear, looking at herself, her pale skin, rounded breasts, her smooth stomach, and the long, pink scar across her right thigh.

  She and Stefan had rented a cottage in Åre over the Easter holiday. She was driving and Stefan was asleep as they got close to Östersund. It was dark, and the box of skis on the roof was making a lot of noise. They had been stuck behind a timber truck for several kilometres through the black fir-forest. The wide rear tyres of the swaying trailer were churning up masses of snow from the edge of the road. In the end she pulled out to the left to overtake, but saw the lights from an oncoming bus and pulled in again.

  After the bus there were three cars, then nothing again. Sandra pulled out again and accelerated. They had just reached a long downward slope and the timber-truck was going faster. She sat beside the huge trailer, clutching the wheel with both hands and felt the car lurch in the turbulence.

  Sandra accelerated a bit too hard to get past, and her wheels slid in the ridge of snow in the middle of the road. She lost control of the car and ended up underneath the timber truck. They got stuck and were dragged along, the metal screeching and shaking. She had blood in her eyes but saw the huge wheels thud into the side of the car. The metal gave way and crumpled on top of Stefan. There was a whirlwind of glass and the truck jack-knifed as the driver braked and the trailer lurched forward with a screech.

  She was alive, but Stefan was dead. She had seen the photographs and read what little had been reported about the evening when her life was thrown off course.

  ‘Are you taking your pills like you should?’ her mum asks gently, and Sandra realises that she must have stopped talking again.

  ‘Leave it, Mum, I can’t talk now,’ she says.

  ‘But you’ll come this evening?’ her mum says quickly, unable to conceal her concern.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sandra replies, sitting on the bed and screwing her eyes as tightly shut as she can.

  ‘It would be lovely if you did. I’ll come and get you, and if you change your mind I can take you back whenever you want.’

  ‘We’ll talk later on,’ Sandra says, and ends the call.

  She puts the phone down on the bedside table, next to her blood-sugar monitor.

  Outside the window the verdant foliage of the bushes is swaying about.

  Sandra takes off the dressing-gown and lays it on the bed, pulls on her jeans and opens the chest of drawers. The broken deer is lying beside the pile of neatly folded clothes. The funny thing is that the little head has disappeared. She takes off her glasses and pulls on a clean T-shirt. Once again she feels like she’s being watched, and glances at the broken blinds, the shadowy garden, the leaves moving in the wind.

  She hears a thud from the hall and jumps. It’s probably just more adverts, despite the sign on the door. She picks up the phone to call her mum back and apologise, and try to explain that she’s actually happy, but that being happy dredges up a load of sadness too.

  She goes out into the kitchen again, looks at the letter on the table and walks over to the worktop to cut herself another slice of cake, but the knife isn’t there.

  She has time to think that her medication has made her confused, that she must have put the knife down in the bathroom or bedroom, when someone dressed in yellow comes towards her from the hall with long strides.

  Sandra just stands still, this can’t be happening.

  She doesn’t manage to say a word, just hold her left hand up to protect herself.

  The knife comes from above, and hits her in the chest.

  Her legs collapse and the knife is jerked out as she falls backwards and sits down hard on the floor. She hits her head against the table, dislodging the candle from its holder, and it rolls over the edge.

  Sandra feels hot blood pulsing down over her stomach. She has a terrible pain deep inside her chest, it feels like her heart is shaking.

  Sandra just sits there, unable to move, unable to understand, when she feels a blow to her head, then a terrible pain in her cheek. She falls backwards and loses consciousness. Everything becomes dark and warm, she can hear burbling water, then a burning pain in her lungs. She comes round and starts coughing up blood, stares up at the ceiling for a few seconds, feels the blade of the knife moving about inside her chest.

  Her heart quivers a few times, then stops. It all goes quiet, it feels as if she’s wading out into warm water. A silver-grey river that’s flowing gently on into the night.

  51

  The police have only had the third film for eighty minutes when the emergency call centre receives a phone call from a woman who says in a monotone that her daughter has been murdered.

  The time is quarter to five when Margot parks her Lincoln Towncar in front of the fluttering tape of the police cordon.

  The policeman who went inside to see if the victim could be saved is sitting on the step of the neighbouring doorway. His fac
e is grey, and there’s a dark look in his eyes. A paramedic puts a blanket round his shoulders and checks his blood pressure as Adam talks to him. The woman who found her daughter is in hospital with her sister. Margot makes a mental note to go and talk to her later, once the tranquillisers have softened the burning layer of pain and shock.

  While Margot was driving to Hägersten she’d called Joona at the hospital to tell him about the third murder. He sounded very tired, but listened to everything she told him, and for some strange reason that made her feel calmer.

  Margot passes the inner cordon and enters the hallway of the block of flats. Floodlights illuminate the stairwell, reflecting off the glass covering the list of residents’ names.

  Margot pulls on some shoe-protectors and carries on past the forensics officers who are setting out stepping-plates in silence.

  She stops in the harsh glare of the floodlights. The metal clicks as it heats up. The smell of warm blood and urine is overpowering and acrid. A forensics officer is filming the room according to a set procedure. On the linoleum floor sits a woman with an utterly ravaged face, her chest split open. Her glasses have fallen off into the pool of blood beside the table.

  She’s lying with her hand over her left breast. Her soft skin shimmers pearly white beneath her blood-blackened hand.

  She has evidently been placed in that position after death, but it doesn’t look particularly sexual.

  Margot stands there for a few moments, looking at the devastating scene, at the display of brutality, the blood sprayed out by a stabbing knife, the arterial spatter on the smooth door of a kitchen cupboard, and the smeared blood left by the victim’s struggle and the spasmodic jerking of her body.

  They know far too little about the second murder, but this one seems to follow the pattern of the first exactly. The level of brutality is inconceivable, and appears to extend far beyond the moment of death.

  Once the fury of the attack subsided, the body was arranged slightly before being left at the scene of the murder.

  In the first case the victim’s fingers had been inserted into her mouth, and this time her hand is covering her breast.

  Margot steps aside to make way for one of the forensic officers who is laying out boards on the floor.

  With her hand on her protruding stomach, she carries on into the bedroom and looks down into the open drawer at the porcelain deer, chestnut-brown, except for the break where the head should be. After a while she returns to the victim.

  She stares once again at the carefully staged arrangement of the hand on her chest, and a thought flits through her head and vanishes.

  There’s something she recognises.

  Margot stands for a while and thinks before leaving the flat and going back to her car. She starts the engine and holds one hand on the wheel and the other on her stomach, moves it down to counter the baby’s rapid movements with her fingertips, the small nudges from the other side, from the beginning.

  She tries to make herself more comfortable, but the steering wheel presses against her stomach.

  What is it I can’t quite remember? she thinks. It could have been five years ago, in a different police district, but I definitely read something.

  Something about the hands, or the deer.

  She can’t help thinking that she won’t get any sleep tonight if she doesn’t work out what it is.

  Margot turns into Polhemsgatan and pulls up beside the rock face.

  Her phone rings and Margot sees the picture of Jenny in her cowboy hat from Tucson on the screen.

  ‘National Crime,’ Margot answers.

  ‘I need to report a crime,’ Jenny says.

  ‘If it’s urgent you should call 112,’ she says, parking more neatly. ‘But otherwise—’

  ‘This is about a crime against public decency,’ Jenny interrupts.

  ‘Can you be a bit more specific?’ Margot asks, opening the car door.

  ‘If you come here, I can show you …’

  Margot has to take the phone from her ear as she gets out of the car and locks it.

  ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I just called to find out where you’d got to,’ Jenny says in a different tone of voice.

  ‘I’m on Kungsholmen, I’ve got to—’

  ‘You haven’t got time – you need to come home straight away,’ she cuts in.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Seriously, Margot … this is hopeless. For God’s sake, you were the one who picked Sunday, they’ll all be here any minute—’

  ‘Don’t be cross with me … I just can’t let go of this case before—’

  ‘You’re not coming?’ Jenny interrupts. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I thought it was next weekend,’ Margot replies.

  ‘How the hell could you think that?’

  Margot had completely forgotten about dinner with her family. The idea was for her and Jenny to thank everyone for their support during the Pride festival. Everyone who had marched with banners saying ‘Proud Parents and Families’.

  ‘You’ll just have to explain that I’ll be a bit late,’ she says, stopping ten metres from the entrance to Police Headquarters.

  ‘Look … this isn’t on,’ Jenny says, then takes a deep breath. ‘I’m actually feeling pretty let down … You got a career opportunity, and I was happy to support you, and …’

  ‘Look after the children while I worked – and now I’m working, just like—’

  ‘But you’re working the whole bloody time, and—’

  ‘That was what we agreed,’ Margot interrupts.

  She starts walking towards the entrance as a colleague comes out and unlocks the heavy chain around the rear wheel of a motorbike.

  ‘OK … that was what we agreed,’ Jenny says quietly.

  ‘I’ve got to go now, but I’ll be home as soon as—’

  Margot stops when she realises that Jenny has hung up on her. She carries on into the lobby, passes the security doors and heads towards the lifts.

  Maria Carlsson, the first victim, had her hand in her mouth, Margot thinks once more.

  That wasn’t enough for her to discern a pattern. But when she saw Sandra Lundgren lying there with her hand over one breast, she had a fleeting sense of a connection.

  It didn’t look natural, it was arranged.

  She walks along the empty corridor to her office, closes the door behind her and sits down at the computer, and searches for arranged bodies.

  She can hear sirens from emergency vehicles somewhere.

  Margot kicks off her shoes as she clicks through the results. Nowhere does she find any similarity to her murders. Her stomach feels tight and she undoes her belt altogether.

  She expands the search to cover the whole country, and when the list of results appears she knows she’s found what she was looking for.

  A murder in Salem.

  The victim was found with her hand round her own neck.

  She had been arranged like that after she died.

  The preliminary investigation had been conducted by the Södertälje Police District.

  As she read, she remembered more details. Far too much had leaked to the press. The extreme level of brutality had been focused primarily on the victim’s face and upper body.

  The dead woman had been found in her bathroom with her hand around her own throat.

  The victim’s name was Rebecka Hansson. She had been wearing pyjama bottoms and a sweater, and according to the post-mortem she had not been subjected either to rape or attempted rape.

  Margot’s heart is pounding in her chest as she finds the information about Rocky Kyrklund, a priest. She reads that an arrest warrant was issued for him in his absence, and he was subsequently apprehended in connection with a traffic accident. The forensic evidence against him was compelling. Rocky Kyrklund underwent a forensic psychiatric examination and was consigned to Karsudden District Hospital with specific restrictions placed on any parole application.

&nbsp
; I’ve found the murderer, Margot thinks, and her hand is trembling as she reaches for the phone and calls Karsudden Hospital.

  When she finds out that Rocky Kyrklund is locked up and that he has never been let out on licence, she demands an immediate meeting with the head of security.

  Barely two hours later Margot is sitting in the office of the head of security, Neil Lindegren, in the gleaming white main building, discussing the security arrangements for Section D:4.

  Neil is a thickset man with a fleshy forehead and neat, stubby hands. He leans back in his chair as he explains the secure perimeter fences, the alarm system, the airlock and passcards.

  ‘That all sounds very good,’ Margot says when Neil falls silent. ‘But the question is: could Rocky Kyrklund have managed to get out anyway?’

  ‘You’re welcome to meet him, if that would make you feel any better,’ he smiles.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure you’d have noticed if he escaped and came back the same day?’

  ‘No one’s escaped,’ Neil says.

  ‘But hypothetically,’ Margot goes on. ‘If he got out immediately after you did your round at eight o’clock – when would he have to be back today in order for his absence not to be noticed?’

  Neil’s smile fades and his hands fall to his lap.

  ‘Today is Sunday,’ he says slowly. ‘He wouldn’t need to be back before five o’clock, but you know … the doors are locked and alarmed, and the whole area is covered by surveillance cameras.’

  52

  On a large monitor, thirty squares show what’s being picked up by the facility’s security cameras.

  A technician in his sixties shows Margot the system of CCTV cameras, motion-activated cameras, their locations, and the laser and infrared barriers.

  Recordings from the surveillance cameras are stored for a maximum of thirty days.

  ‘This is Section D:4,’ he says, pointing. ‘The corridor, dayroom, exercise yard, fence, the outside of the fence, the outside of the building … and these show the park and the driveway.’

  The monitor shows an image of the hospital as it was at five o’clock that morning. The static glow from the lamps make the park look strangely lifeless. The clock in the corner of the screen moves on, but everything remains perfectly still.